George Crumb has composed six works to date under the title “American
Songbook”. They are essentially sets of folk-song arrangements.
The two under review are “Afro-American spirituals” and “American
Civil War songs, folk songs, and spirituals”. Anyone with even
a passing knowledge of the composer will know to be prepared for
the unconventional.

Both works are
sung by Barbara Ann Martin. Hers is a distinctive, dramatic
soprano voice with a wide range. She has premiered several works
by Crumb and presumably has his approval. Even so, not all the
sounds she makes are as lovely as one might want. Her voice,
as recorded here, has a tendency to spread uncomfortably under
pressure. The booklet notes, however, quote a Chicago Tribune
article which refers to her as “a worthy successor to the late
Jan DeGaetani”, so not everyone hears her as I do. In any event
she clearly understands and lives this music to the full.

She is accompanied
by Orchestra 2001, which, in its configuration here, is a pianist
and four percussion players. The piano is amplified and otherwise
modified, and only newcomers to Crumb will be surprised at the
list of instruments the percussionists are called upon to play.
One of the songs, for instance, in addition to more conventional
instruments, employs “a Kenyan shaker, Appalachian ‘bones’,
Philippine ‘devil chasers’… African talking drum … rute (a bundle
of sticks), along with Tibetan prayers stones, secco and muted
piano.” The result is a sound-world unlike that of any other
composer, immensely varied, exotic, and frequently working at
the quieter end of the dynamic scale.

A Journey
Beyond Time opens with a setting of Swing Low, Sweet
Chariot which exactly fits the description above. The ear
can just perceive traces of the “multiple canons” referred to
in the accompanying notes. Joshua Fit de Battle ob Jerico
follows. It’s a spectacular setting, unusually, for Crumb,
rapid in tempo and with the volume turned up, especially at
the moment that the very instrument appears which is said to
have brought down those walls, the shofar. The intimate mourning
of Steal Away is disturbed at times by the singer’s pronounced
vibrato. The notes tell us, rather enigmatically, that the setting
“… encodes Underground Railway instructions within an intimation
of death.” Other settings include Oh, a-Rock-a My Soul,
the first time I have heard any version of this since Lonnie
Donegan sang it in the 1960s, and Sit Down, Sister, another
genuinely rapid arrangement. Then follows Nobody Knows de
Trouble I See and the work closes with an arrangement of
Go Down, Moses. In general, the composer presents the
songs without any further vocal adornment, wishing, in his own
words “…to stay out of the way of those beautiful tunes.” Where
he does intervene it is usually to add or take away beats, the
resulting rhythmic disturbance designed to bring out the character
of the song or the state of mind of its protagonist. Presuming
that the accompaniments are meant to support – and perhaps to
enhance – this important musical heritage, Crumb is successful,
though the atmosphere he creates, often luminously beautiful
and, usually, at one with the song, can seem undifferentiated
from one song to another. And I wonder how much more there is
to find in these arrangements once one has heard them three
or four times. There are also a few places in questionable taste.
Sit Down, Sister, for example, ends with a shout. This
is undoubtedly meant to be humorous, and I even think I understand
why, but it seems cheap and ineffective, as does speaking, with
emphasis, the word “dead” in Go Down, Moses. And do the
lines “Motherless children have a hard time” really appear in
Sometimes I feel like a Motherless Child?

If I’m not totally
convinced, then, by Songbook II, I’m even less convinced, sadly,
by The Winds of Destiny. As one would expect from the
subject matter, this is a harsher affair overall. There is a
real martial feel to When Johnny Comes Marching Home,
though there is great bitterness and irony too. This is a successful
setting, at least up to the point where the composer quotes
from the slow movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, thereby losing
me, and the singer’s sobs at the end are embarrassing. Go
Tell it on the Mountain! is harsh and strident rather than
joyful, and the repeated phrases at the end, presumably to suggest
an exultant voice echoing from peak to peak, strike me as absurd.
The opening of the first song is magical, mysterious and strikingly
beautiful, featuring instruments such as the Aboriginal thunder
stick, but what has it to do with Mine Eyes Have Seen the
Glory, and why is the singer placed in the distance? The
end of the work, too, a setting of Shenandoah, is also extremely
beautiful. Barbara Ann Martin is wonderfully poised here, but
the accompaniment could serve for any of the other quiet, subdued
songs in both books.

There is one
original song in these two collections, in Songbook IV, entitled
The Enchanted Valley. The words are by the composer’s
daughter, Ann Crumb, and are very atmospheric, but no more than
that. The musical illustration of dogs barking and lost souls
again seems unsubtle and, amongst so much music whose purpose
is difficult to grasp, ultimately irritating. Each collection
has an instrumental interlude, beautiful in both cases. In the
second book, which, like the first and the third, is meant to
evoke a particular stage of daytime, the score is arranged in
the form of the sun, a central, circular stave with other staves
emerging around it like the sun’s rays. In the fourth book,
which represents night, the score of this interlude is printed
in white on a black background.

The quality of
the recorded sound is remarkable. The percussion instruments and
the amplified piano are rendered almost tangible. The vocal part
is recorded very close, to the singer’s detriment, in one or two
songs, and the listener will wonder why, even though it is clearly
a conscious decision. The booklet notes, by Eric Bruskin, are
detailed and well written, but some of his observations are difficult
to swallow, and quite a lot of technical musical knowledge is
required to understand much of it.

Crumb completists
will want this and others already devoted to the composer may
well get more out of it than I did. But newcomers are warned
that this is not the place to start to make the composer’s acquaintance.
Ancient Voices of Children, a set of songs to poems by
Lorca, typical of its time – 1970 – and probably a masterpiece,
would serve that purpose much better.

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